


the ways up and down

by santanico



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-07-20
Packaged: 2018-02-09 17:54:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1992276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/santanico/pseuds/santanico
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katherine and Elena go back and forth, back and forth, never seeming to settle into a working rhythm. Whatever they are is too complex to name, so Elena doesn't bother. A commission fic with inspiration from the Maroon 5 song "One More Night".</p>
            </blockquote>





	the ways up and down

**Author's Note:**

> this is for [sheneedstobeprotected](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sheneedstobeprotected) who commissioned me to help out my girlfriend! shameless plug: if you want to commission me for fic, please read [this post](http://vstahl.tumblr.com/post/91106633334/hey-everyone-i-figured-this-is-better-than) and message me.
> 
> warnings: allusions to rough sex, an unhealthy relationship, mentions to past emotional abuse from male characters (namely stefan and damon)
> 
> fic is canon divergent, set in s5 but without any of the bullshit they pulled with katherine. any mistakes are my own.

Elena realizes that she is not actually a romantic person. Though romance had maybe driven many of her past relationships, she starts to wonder why they never worked out, why she always questioned herself, why the love never sat well and – maybe that’s because she never loved these people.

Matt, Damon, Stefan. All playing the same game of cat and mouse, trying to hook her into their hands, but their grip was always too tight.

Now she lays awake and she rolls over onto her side and she wonders, vaguely, what a psychiatrist would say.

Narcissistic personality disorder comes to mind. She smiles to herself.

Katherine Pierce is beautiful.

Like, in a poetic way.

Not a romantic way though. Elena has decidedly barred herself from romance for the time being. 

Elena’s a vampire now, and she can see, even in the dark, the bite marks along Katherine’s shoulders (not puncture marks, but hard bites from Elena’s human set of teeth), the scratches down her back. Katherine sleeps peacefully, so humanly exhausted from the things they’ve done, and Elena…Elena revels in it.

Because it’s beautiful. It’s messy and a little fucked up, but it’s beautiful.

Katherine opens her eyes in the dark, and it reminds Elena of herself when she was just a little younger. It makes her think of the life she used to lead. She remembers waking up alone in cold mornings, and she remembers warm bodies besides hers, and she remembers thinking she was in love. She remembers being human, and Katherine –

Katherine _is_ human.

It’s the most astounding thing.

And of course, that’s poetic too, though perhaps on an entirely different level, maybe with less beauty to it. Katherine is human and she hates it, damn near growls about it when she gets the chance. Elena knows every angry feeling that Katherine has because she felt those exact things when _she_ was human.

It’s less complicated than it sounds.

Elena reaches over, nestling her head into the pillow, and brushes a curl away from Katherine’s thin face. “Good morning,” she says in a quiet whisper, even though it’s barely six o'clock.

Katherine purses her lips and closes her eyes, though she doesn’t push Elena away from her. She rolls over, onto her back, then onto her other side, facing away from Elena. Then Katherine pauses and her shoulders eventually relax. Elena notes the redness of the scratch marks she’s left on Katherine’s skin, and something churns deep in her gut. There’s something wretchedly beautiful about seeing a mirrored reflection of herself, bruised and battered.

“I’m sore,” Katherine says, and Elena shifts closer despite herself, resting inches away from Katherine’s bare skin. “I don’t know if this was all…a good idea.”

Elena snorts to herself. “Of course it wasn’t a _good_ idea,” she says after a moment, cautiously raising her hand to trace over the marks on Katherine’s shoulders. “We knew that from the get go, didn’t we?”

Katherine turns again, onto her back. The blanket rides above her hips, and her bare chest is visible in the dark of the bedroom. Elena tries not to stare, though something certainly draws her towards Katherine’s body. There are fingernail marks near Katherine’s left breast, underneath – there are more teeth marks above her breasts, but closer to her collarbone.

Elena takes a deep breath. It’s all she has.

“Elena,” Katherine says before she breathes in as well, eyes falling shut again. “Do you believe in God?”

Elena pushes herself up on her elbow and watches Katherine for a long moment. She – isn’t sure how to respond to the question, at best. At worst, she’s afraid she’ll give the wrong answer. She’s afraid that she’ll find herself admitting something she never admitted to herself.

After a brief hesitation she shrugs. “I don’t know, really,” she says, and it feels honest. At least, she thinks it’s honest. “God…Heaven, Hell. Never thought those things could really exist in a world where vampires exist as well.”

Katherine turns her head. Elena wants to bury her face in Katherine’s hair, wants to breathe her in, wants to relive last night every night for the rest of her life. She desperately doesn’t want to go back to the way things were, and yet – that’s all she has.

 _This_ is all she has. Someone with her face, sleeping in her bed. Except Katherine doesn’t have her face, not really, and Katherine isn’t sleeping anymore.

It’s the first, and Elena hopes the last, night they’ll spend together.

-

Elena is wrong.

Elena is often wrong, and she’s willing to admit that when the time comes, to whoever she needs to.

But – Elena is wrong, and Katherine is in her bed again less than a week later.

They don’t speak of it, because they’re afraid of it. They’re afraid of whatever they’re doing because it’s scary. And Elena doesn’t want to consider the reality because the reality is that she’s looking into a face so eerily similar to her own and feeling sparks and twists in her gut that don’t seem to ever end.

She pulls Katherine in by her waist and their mouths slot together. There’s something epic to be said about their kisses, something extraordinary. Elena wants to laugh because Katherine kisses like she’s hungry, like she’s fucking starving, and never seems to want to let Elena go. Elena can remember times when she used to kiss the same way, when her entire body felt empty and hollow and she thought she would never be able to move away except to grab and kiss and hold on as tight as possible.

Now she finds herself in the position of protector. Katherine still has scars that are healing across her shoulders, along her throat and neck. Elena smiles and kisses the places she had once bitten, finds herself immersed in the warmth of Katherine’s skin. It’s a fucked up world and she never wants to leave, never wants to move. She wants the warm, prickling sensation that travels from her cheeks to her throat to the tips of her fingers to last forever.

More than anything, Elena wants to remember.

Katherine throws her hair back over her shoulder and leans back, her hands finding Elena’s waist and holding there tight. Katherine sighs before dipping down and pressing her mouth to Elena’s throat. Elena sighs as she leans back as well, and she starts to question everything about what she’s doing.

She moves, pulling Katherine over. Katherine gasps and lets out a laugh before Elena rolls on top of her, straddling her at the waist.

Elena pauses as she runs her hands along Katherine’s bare shoulders.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” she says before tracing the end of her index finger along Katherine’s jaw. Katherine turns her head and smiles before closing her eyes. Elena has said this before, and so has Katherine, but for whatever reason…it never seems to stop.

“I’m sorry,” Katherine says. Her voice is gentle, almost sad, and Elena is taken aback by it for a moment, picks her head up and frowns down at Katherine.

“Are you really?”

Katherine smiles again, wider this time. “Maybe not,” she murmurs.

-

With the passing of nights and days, Elena doubts her own convictions. She doubts her very core self. Sometimes she doubts she has a soul – not because she’s a vampire, but maybe because she’s devoid of one.

There’s a way that Katherine looks at her sometimes, eyes narrowed and sharp and lips pressed together in a thin line, that makes a shiver crawl up Elena’s spine. It isn’t frightening, necessarily. Not that Katherine can’t be frightening anymore – the opposite is true. There’s something about Katherine’s humanity that sparks something much more terrifying in her.

Before, Katherine had been like any other overpowered villain. Feminine to a degree where Elena could almost laugh (she wore heels that Elena never understood as a human; but respects now that she realizes they are so much easier to move in as a vampire), Katherine would wear blood red lipstick and keep her hair perfectly kept somehow amiss all the chaos of their lives.

 _Their_ lives was never something Elena thought about. But now.

Now, Katherine is human. Katherine has sudden stretch marks on her hips and her knees, the kind that disappeared when Elena turned. Katherine has deep bags under her eyes that Elena had once recognized in herself. Katherine is hesitant, but she is still just as vicious as always.

They aren’t a couple…so they don’t do things like couples would.

And Katherine still scares Elena, despite everything.

Maybe because she’s just…so strong.

Elena sits on the curb where her house used to be. It had burned to the ground entirely and every last thing had been lost, but as Elena looks at the grass seed starting to sprout, she doesn’t feel anything. Not an ache in her chest, not a pinch in her brain. She doesn’t feel sad or relieved or happy. It doesn’t feel like anything.

It feels like it was a waste of time.

And for a moment, she wonders if the fact that she’s still _alive_ is a waste of time. Of energy, of the universe.

She presses her palms together and thinks about Katherine’s eyes.

They _aren’t_ her eyes, but it isn’t like looking at a twin. It can’t be. Elena can’t imagine that many identical twins experience what Elena does when she looks at Katherine.

There’s the familiar roar of an old car on the street and Elena turns around in time to see Katherine slam the driver’s seat closed before walking around the car in front and leaning against the side.

She’s in a pair of Elena’s jeans, her hair loose and uncurled. As Elena gets closer she starts to notice the smaller details. A necklace that Katherine probably stole at some point over the last five hundred years, the details in the brass too believable and unique to be something from a local drug store. Jeans that Elena bought less than a year ago. Three different silver rings with different precious jewels on both of her hands. Nails, trimmed down to the end of her fingers and unpainted. Clear lip balm. Acne on her forehead.

Katherine straightens up as Elena approaches. “We need to go,” she says, and Elena pauses on the sidewalk, crossing her arms over her chest and raising an eyebrow.

“Go where?” she says. She wants to yell, suddenly. She wants to question what’s been happening since Katherine turned human, wants to shout about how they should both be dead today and yet, here they _stand_ contemplating leaving what is likely just another dimension of hell.

“Away from here,” Katherine says, waving a hand in a way that’s too nonchalant for who Elena has always known to be Katherine Pierce. “I don’t know,” she says, letting out a sigh – and Elena has never seen Katherine quite so vulnerable, except maybe in bed. “Neither of us have homes. Let’s make a home.”

Elena laughs. She can hardly contain herself – it’s _funny_. The idea of having a home again…is funny.

But Katherine doesn’t crack a smile.

“You’re kidding, right? You’re not serious.”

“Why not?” Katherine says. “We look exactly alike.”

Elena does a double take. “Which is exactly why we should stay far, far away from each other. What the hell are you thinking.”

Katherine smirks and shakes her head. “I’ve always been the spontaneous one,” she says, then sighs again. “I just don’t want to be here anymore. Don’t you get that? Mystic Falls is a trap. The people here, they’re sicker than we are.”

Elena bites the inside of her cheek. They never talk about it, never address the elephant in the room, and now Katherine is looking at her with this shining honesty that Elena hasn’t seen from anyone since she was younger.

She used to feel so _young_.

“Where are we going to go?” Elena asks, feeling her lips and fingers trembling.

Finally, Katherine grins.

“Wherever we want to go, Elena. No more restrictions. No more being afraid.”

“We can’t do this on our own. You’re still…you’re human.”

“And you’re not,” Katherine says slowly, opening the passenger seat to the car. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Anything is better – anything is safer than this place. I can’t stand to look at these houses and see these people for another minute.”

Elena hesitates. It’s everything she’s been too afraid to want. It’s someone who, for whatever reason, she wants to be near. She can’t explain it; the words don’t exist – but she trusts Katherine. As fucked up, twisted, and possibly stupid this relationship is…Elena isn’t quite ready to give up.

“Fine,” she says after a moment. “We’re going to drive.”

“And we aren’t going to stop,” Katherine says, smiling in a way that’s surprisingly warm.

Elena steps forward and Katherine heads back around the car to the driver’s seat, sliding in as Elena sits in the passenger’s side. She buckles the seatbelt, a force of habits from years and years of being human, and Katherine reluctantly does the same with a sigh.

As Elena watches the sky bleed orange and red as the sun sets across the edge of town, she thinks about saying something, asking questions. She wonders what Katherine would say about some things. She wonders if Katherine has thought any of this through, if they’re going to stay at a hotel or if they’re going to pose as twins or pretend to be the same person.

She isn’t in love; hasn’t been probably ever. But there’s still someone beside her, someone who grins as the radio plays something Elena hasn’t heard before.

And it’s better than anything else she could have ever imagined.


End file.
